Today, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of “Donald Trump may be ugly, but he’s Jesus, therefore you can’t hold him accountable for anything he does ever,” vs. “No.” Because the current Supreme Court is largely made up of unqualified partisan Republican hacks sitting in stolen seats, Trump’s lawyers didn’t get laughed out of the Court and sent down the stairs on their asses as dramatically as any patriotic American would have preferred.
Before we look at any of the highlights, consider the scene, though: Trump was not present, because he was in criminal court in New York facing charges on falsifying business records to hide his illegal porn peener payoffs, in order that news of his mistresses might not have a deleterious effect on his 2016 campaign. In Arizona, all his pals were indicted last night for helping him try to steal the 2020 election, and there he is (so far) an unindicted co-conspirator. (Though that simply might be because the Arizona state AG wants to let the Trump felony traffic jam clear a bit before she throws new charges at him.)
And before the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers continued to stare the law in the face and say that, as long as Trump is pretty sure he was doing OFFICIAL PRESIDENT DOODIES — not the kind that might smell like they’re falling in his pants in New York as we speak — then it would have been fine for him to have political rivals assassinated. OFFICIALLY.
In fact, unbelievably — but really not unbelievably, considering these hacks, and if Democrats don’t start screaming about court-packing starting now, then they’re cowards — the New York Times’s live updates say the “conservative majority seems ready to limit election case against Trump.”
If the Court “limited” the case, would that make it go away? No, not necessarily, but it would likely get kicked back to lower courts to decide more precisely what Trump did to overthrow the Republic FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES and which things he did extra-presidentially.
Really. And there would certainly be no trial before the election. (Joe Biden, start making lists of what you’d like to do OFFICIALLY.)
That dipshit John Sauer, the one whom appeals court Judge Florence Pan so thoroughly embarrassed when she asked him if it would be fine for a president to order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival, was the one showing his ass today, naturally:
[Sauer] pressed an extreme version of the former president’s argument. In answer to hypothetical questions, he said that presidential orders to murder political rivals or stage a coup could well be subject to immunity.
Cool. Though, as the New York Times summary notes, at least some of the conservative justices did seem to understand that this isn’t a ruling that simply fulfills their obligatory conservative judicial tonguing-of-Trump’s-undergirth duties, but would rather apply to all presidents. “We’re writing a rule for the ages,” said Neil Gorsuch. “This case has huge implications for the presidency, for the future of the presidency, for the future of the country,” said Boofs O’Kavanaugh.
Translation: If we do what Trump wants, we’re also doing what Stinky Hillary Ocasio Obama wants!
But the Times says Kavanaugh seems likely to be in favor of immunity for official acts. (Also he and Alito spent quite a bit of time arguing that the main fraud statute Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump under is TOO VAGUE to even apply to former presidents. That was not even part of what today was supposed to be about. Casting a wide net to tickle Trump’s sack, boys!)
Limp-brained, airheaded fascist cumsack Sam Alito was obviously cool with Team Trump’s arguments:
“A stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully,” he said, adding that the prospect of criminal prosecution would make that less likely.
“Will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” he asked.
Literally, he was asking if it would destabilize the country to NOT rule for Trump, and suggesting we need to give presidents permanent immunity just in case they’re scared they’ll be prosecuted for, say, trying to steal an election they lost and thereby overthrow democracy.
Meanwhile, Michael Dreeben, arguing for the government, for sanity, and for decency:
[Dreeben] said executive immunity would license a president to commit “bribery, treason, sedition, murder” and, as in Mr. Trump’s case “conspiring to use fraud to overturn the results of an election and perpetuate himself in power.” He added, “The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong.”
The Times summary notes that some justices wanted to know whether a president’s motive would matter — are they doing something that could be construed as an official act, but for corrupt purposes? And will all presidents now prosecute their immediate predecessors, like serial criminal Trump is always bitching about on Truth Social? As if this is somehow new, the idea that a president could be prosecuted for what Trump did. Hell, Mitch McConnell assured us they could, when he explained why the Senate wouldn’t be convicting Trump in his second impeachment trial.
But those conservative justices are really buying what Trump is saying! Because they are morons who refuse to accept that prosecuting Trump isn’t some new trend, simply because it’s never happened before, but rather simply what happens when one of the worst humans God ever spat out of heaven inexplicably becomes president of the United States.
Wrote Alan Feuer for the Times:
Much of the discussion this morning has swirled around the question of whether, without immunity, presidents will be hounded by their rivals with malicious charges after leaving office. Alito and other conservatives on the court seem concerned that the Trump prosecutions will open the door to endless attacks against future presidents.
Because Alito, as we have said many times, is not especially bright.
So now what?
Well, it depends on whether the Court lights a fire under its own ass to rule on this one, or whether Clarence Thomas and Alito need some time bouncing on their billionaires’ laps or otherwise dawdling. If they decide there needs to be a delineation between official and unofficial acts for prosecutorial immunity purposes, will they figure those out on their own, or send it to the lower courts to do the job?
Could somehow a prosecution that only involves the UNOFFICIAL PRESIDENTIAL ways Trump tried to destroy America with his tiny hands go forward, and let’s just forget about the rest? Amy Coney Barrett asked that, basically.
But! From the NYT tick-tock:
Justice Barrett seems to signal that she is less likely to find that presidents have blanket immunity for their official acts. When Dreeben says the system needs to balance the effective functioning of the presidency and accountability for a former president under the rule of law, and the existing system does that pretty well or maybe needs a few ancillary rules but that is different from the “radical proposal” put forward by Trump’s legal team, she says: “I agree.”
So we just don’t gotdamn know!
But if you asked us right now if these illegitimate partisan hacks were going to manage somehow to co-sign authoritarian right-wing tyrant presidents’ desires to destroy the country on a whim — or at the very least give Trump gigantic hairy reacharounds in his quest to delay this until he (he hopes) has a chance to steal the next election and make it all go away with a snap of his stubby fingers, we wouldn’t bet against you.
There is much, much more at that Times link, so go rabbithole.
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
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